Jesus, Master! Have pity on us! - What a wonderful relationship to God. To have perfect trust in God even when we have hardly met Him. These lepers know that their life is a complete mess and that they are outcasts from the community. Only a divine intervention can heal them. Perhaps their faith in Jesus is not yet strong, but there is something there pushing them to ask Him to heal them. Most of us turn to God in the same way: when we are desperate. It really asks a lot of us to pray when things are going well.

The first reading today from the Second Book of Kings gives us the story of Naaman the Syrian, who was also desperate to be healed. Like us, when the healing did not go according to his own plan, he was ready to give up. The part of this reading we have today only tells of the healing and the incredible faith that happened in Naaman.

You and I, again, might be just like that: if we see miracles or experience miracles, we can have an enormous faith. But without some miracle, it is more difficult to believe. Why does not God send us more miracles? We just do not know the ways of God. Always God is trying to gain our attention and our faith and love. God knows best the way to do that in each of our lives - we must trust that.

The important teaching of the second reading today, from the Second Letter to Timothy is this: If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. God is always faithful to us. God always loves us, even when we reject Him. It takes a lot of faith to believe that about God. Most of the time when we think that He is angry with us, it is we who have rejected Him.

So as we let ourselves be formed by today's readings, let us also commit ourselves to asking for faith as did the lepers: Lord, have pity on us! Let us always remember to give thanks for life and faith. Lord, have pity on us!